1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automatic electronic assembly apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to an intelligent feeding apparatus for feeding belted components to an automatic assembly apparatus comprising a driving means for the stepwise feeding of the components and means for peeling off the cover tape from the supporting tape of the belt.
2. The Prior Art
In manufacturing electronic circuitry, it is well known in the art to make use of an automatic apparatus picking up electronic components like resistors, capacitors, integrated circuits and the like from a supply, displacing these components to a printed circuit board or to a substrate provided with a conductive pattern and to insert the components into the holes provided in the printed circuit board or to put them onto the substrate. Particularly in the case of surface mounted devices, the components are available in belted form, i.e. they are contained in a plurality of small compartments provided in a supporting tape of the belt. The individual compartments are covered by a cover tape, and the belt is wound up on a reel.
In order that the components may be easily picked up by a suitable picking member, e.g. a suction needle, the tape on the reel must be unwound and fed to a pick up station, and the cover tape must be removed or peeled off to enable the picking member to gain access to the components.
The German Patent No. 34 24 323 A1 discloses a feeding apparatus of the kind mentioned above. Thereby, the driving means is located along side of the guiding means for the belted components, i.e. essentially in a plane running parallel to the vertical plane in which the feeding of the belted components takes place. Thus, this feeding apparatus requires a significant amount of space in a direction perpendicular to the plane in which the feeding of the belted components takes place. However, it is desired that a feeding apparatus of the kind mentioned above be as narrow as possible since, usually, a more than one such feeding apparatus is mounted next to one another in an overall assembly apparatus, forming a feeding station supplying a plurality of different electronic components to a circuit board or other substrate.
This apparatus uses a deviation means for peeling off the cover tape and a driving means for removing the cover tape. Unfortunately, the aforementioned driving means, as well as a reel for winding up the peeled off cover tape, is located above the horizontal plane in which a pick up area is provided where the components are supplied, i.e. where the components are picked up from the compartments by the suction needle of the assembly apparatus. Consequently, the view onto the pick up area is obstructed and a precise alignment of the pick up member to the pick up area is rendered more difficult. Furthermore, a safety clutch is required for the driving of the peeling off means with the consequence that the design of the feeding apparatus is quite complicated and expensive. The empty belts and the peeled off cover tape are transported to places located distantly to each other so that a common automatic removal of this waste is hardly possible.
The German Published Patent Application No. 37 36 563 discloses a feeding apparatus comprising a peeling off means located in the path of movement of the belted components. It includes a peeling off tongue which is directed opposite to the direction of movement of the belted components and engages between the supporting tape and the cover tape of the belt containing the components to be fed in order to separate these two tapes from each other. With this solution, it is necessary that a gap be present between the supporting tape and the cover tape into which the aforementioned tongue can be inserted. Following the tongue, a funnel-shaped deviation member is provided by means of which the peeled off cover tape is deviated from the path of the belted components to a path running parallel thereto. The design of this peeling off means is more complicated without any evident advantage, the threading of the belt containing the components to be fed is very cumbersome and the apparatus is useful only for a limited number of applications.
In addition, prior art component tape feeding apparatus has not had the capability of performing certain functions, such as direct inventory control and automatic feed adjusting capability for adapting to different size components.